Want to know how we can best help ourselves? Actually, the answer is pretty simply, but at the same time, it can be difficult to achieve. If we truly want to help ourselves as much as we say we do, then we need to learn to forgive ourselves of our past mistakes, and live to be our unique selves.
A lot of the struggles and difficulties that we face throughout the course of our lives either stem from the fact that we are too worried about what others think, or we are scared to take a chance because we don’t want to fail.
Think about it. Right now, you might be unhappy with where it is that you are in life. Maybe you want change what you are doing with your life, or maybe you just want to break free and do whatever the you know what it is that you want to do. Maybe you just want to feel comfortable in your own body for a change.
If this is you, then why aren’t you doing what it is that you desire to be doing? Odds are, it is either because you are scared to take a chance on yourself with the possibility of failing, or because you are too concerned with what others around you will think of you.
Now I know that this is a lot easier said than done, but trust me, it will be worth it. Learning to forgive myself, and learning to love myself for the imperfect person that I am was the best thing that I have ever done in my life.
We all have our own baggage that we carry around. The truth is, all of this baggage is only holding us back from ever reaching our true potential.
For me, the biggest struggle that I have faced in life is my battle with depression and an eating disorder. But up until a few years ago, I would never admit it. Family and friends would often ask if I was feeling okay, and I would respond by telling them that I was just tired.
I knew better. It wasn’t that I was tired. I was depressed. Depressed, but was not willing to tell anybody about the constant battle that was going on in my head because I did not want to be judged by others. I mean if others didn’t like me, and I already didn’t like myself, then what else was left?
The longer that I let my emotions build up inside of my head, the more hatred that grew inside of me for the world around me, for myself, and for life in general. What was the point of living if I could never be happy?
It may sound dramatic to you. In looking back at what I am thinking right now, even I think it sounds too dramatic to be true. But this is honestly how I felt for years. Years of waiting for a miracle to happen that would change my life around.
I could hardly keep a friendship, I didn’t what my purpose was in life, I didn’t know what it felt like to actually experience all that life has to offer, and I didn’t know what it felt like to be my true self. Instead, I would walk around my college campus or at work every day trying to be the person that others wanted me to be. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to adapt to everybody else’s opinions? Impossible.
There is no step by step process to follow when it comes to forgiving yourself and embracing your true self. You just kind of have to do it. As some point, we all realize that the pain we are putting ourselves through just isn’t worth it.
I remember the first day that I started this blog. For four days prior to my first post, I did not leave my room, I did not talk to anyone in my family, and I didn’t know if I wanted to be alive. There was no shaking my depression, my eating disorder was slowly killing my spirits, and I was lashing out at every person that came near me. I simply felt like a failure.
That was my breaking point. Something inside of me just clicked, and I simply said screw what other people think of me. Trying to be someone that I was not led me to hate everything about life. There is no way that being my true self could be any worse than what I was feeling.
And I was right. I started writing my thoughts as an outlet, surrounded myself with all of the positivity that I could contain, and started working my a** off to be the best person that I could become. Except this time, it was by my standards and nobody else’s.
Along with reaching a breaking point, that was the day that I quit regretting all of my past mistakes in life. I realized that focusing on the things that I regret was just dragging me down. There was no way that I could go back and change anything, so why not forgive myself and start fresh.
Each day since then, I wake up with the same goal for myself, and that is to be a better version of me than I was yesterday.
It’s strange to look back and think about how much I used to care about what other people thought of me compared to how little I care what they think of me now. Not to sound naive, or to say that I don’t care at all. But compared to how much I used to let the judgement of others dictate my life, it is very minimal now.
The best piece of advice that I can give you, is to just be the person that you want to be. Everything else in your life will fall in place as long as you work towards what matters to YOU, and focus on being the unique individual that you were born to be.
Let go of your wrong doings, embrace all of the beautiful treasures that life has to hold, and just live your life. This is the only one that you get to live. So live it, and hold nothing back.
Michael Bonnell
12/17/2018
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